sl-release package versioning question

[djalden]

Hi,
I've recently switch to SL (from CentOS) and have run into a minor annoyance. The sl-release package version differs from CentOS (and from RHEL I'm told). The version includes the release number whereas CentOS/RHEL don't. For example, on 6.2, the package is sl-release-6.2-1.1 compared to CentOS being centos-release-6-2. The annoyance is in the $releasever variable in yum.conf -- in my centos/rhel yum.conf files, I can use $releasever to obtain the major release number, but on my SL boxes, I have to have a special yum.conf file since they include the release number in the version field (which means I have to hard code the version to be whatever major version I'm using).

Can someone explain to me why sl does it this way?

...thnx,
...dave

[redman]

CentOS is an independent project, just like Scientific Linux is.
Both use the same sources from Red Hat.
Both try to rebuild RHEL as good as they can, but they follow their own path.

I wouldn't mix RHEL (if you have an active subscription) with CentOS and SL.
Especially regarding packages that might be different compaired to RHEL.
The repos from CentOS and SL should be used seperately from each other (using several 3rd party repos is something to do with care!).

[joka]

QUOTE (djalden @ Mar 27 2012, 04:47 PM)

The sl-release package version differs from CentOS (and from RHEL I'm told).  The version includes the release number whereas CentOS/RHEL don't.  For example, on 6.2, the package is sl-release-6.2-1.1 compared to CentOS being centos-release-6-2.  The annoyance is in the $releasever variable in yum.conf -- in my centos/rhel yum.conf files, I can use $releasever to obtain the major release number, but on my SL boxes, I have to have a special yum.conf file since they include the release number in the version field (which means I have to hard code the version to be whatever major version I'm using). Can someone explain to me why sl does it this way?

6.2-1.1 is the version number of the RPM package sl-release, not the SL release number.

I've just found a way to query the release number:

CODE

python -c 'import yum, pprint; yb = yum.YumBase(); pprint.pprint(yb.conf.yumvar, width=1)'

The release number depends on from where you have downloaded SL: Currently it can be one of 6, 6x, 6.2 or 6rolling